


Out and About

by youcouldmakealife



Series: Impaired Judgment (and other excuses) [63]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 20:45:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16709734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcouldmakealife/pseuds/youcouldmakealife
Summary: “Okay, time out,” Chaz says. “No couple bickering in my apartment. That’s an Official Rule.”“We’re not bickering,” Jared says. “And you sublet, so it’s hardly your apartment.”Chaz snorts. “Always fucking semantics with you, eh?”“Always,” Jared says.“You sound likeyou’recouple bickering,” Bryce mutters under his breath.





	Out and About

A week after whatever Chaz and Bryce’s bro talk covered — Bryce refuses to repeat the fuckboy statements, all mumbly ‘it’s private’, which was code for ‘it’s embarrassing’, judging by his face — they finally do go out with Chaz. Or, well — they go to Chaz’s place, which isn’t exactly the same, but is probably better, because Bryce won’t be paranoid the whole about how it looks, whether he has to sit like, five feet from Jared or something. 

Jared doubts he’s going to be super touchy or anything — he’s still clearly at least a little uncomfortable that Chaz knows — but they don’t have to have like, a no homo buffer zone. Probably still a bit of a buffer zone because of Bryce’s discomfort, but beggars can’t be choosers, and it’d probably make Jared feel awkward anyway, being couple-y in front of other people, even if it’s just Chaz. Shit’s private.

Chaz’s place is shockingly nice, and Jared says that as someone who doesn’t throw the word shocking around. It’s all smooth polished wood, and nice art on the walls, and knick-knacks, but not the ugly kind, the kind that actually add to a room without making it look cluttered. It looks like a home, and considering Chaz didn’t move in until a few months ago, that’s impressive as hell.

“Nice, dude,” Jared says, looking around. “Your girlfriend do all this?” It definitely wasn’t Chaz. Jared saw his room at his billet, and it was nice and all, but like, in a standard nineteen year old dude way, and Jared doesn’t think Chaz at twenty is that different.

“He’s subletting,” Bryce says, looking all proud that he knows that and Jared doesn’t, and Jared would be a little annoyed at the smug if he didn’t know how few friends Bryce has on the Flames. Like, outside of team time, it’s — well, this is one of the few times Jared’s heard of him actually chilling with a teammate during off-hours. 

And obviously it’s not obligatory — see: Jared, generally saying ‘no thanks’ and chilling by himself — but the difference it it’s by choice for Jared, and Bryce doesn’t actually seem to _like_ just hanging out with himself. Sometimes when Jared comes back to town Bryce looks flat out relieved as well as happy to see him, all ‘thank god it’s not just me here anymore’. Jared — honestly doesn’t like thinking about what it was like before they were in each other’s pockets, because that is a lot of time to be alone if you don’t actually want to be. So mostly Jared’s just glad that Bryce has even been here before, smug or not.

Chaz just shrugs, all modest. And yeah, okay, sublet, but still.

“Your place is way nicer than Bryce’s place,” Jared says. Like, not size wise or like, and if you added up the price of furniture here versus Bryce’s it’s probably cost way less, but it looks like somewhere an adult lives. And not like, Chaz, at twenty, or even Bryce at twenty-two, but a grown ass adult. 

“Hey,” Bryce says loudly, then, low enough that Jared thinks he doesn’t want Chaz to hear him, “It’s ours.”

“Way nicer than our place,” Jared amends.

“Hey,” Bryce says, but not as loud. “Our place is nice.”

“Chaz has legit like, art on the walls,” Jared says. “Our walls have your jerseys.” And pucks. And a U18 medal. And, in the kitchen, the Flames calendar Jared’s grandma got him stuck on Bryce’s month, because Jared finds it amusing. Confusing sometimes when he just glances and is wondering why the dates don’t match up with the days of the week, but that’s only early morning, before coffee. Mostly it’s amusing. But yeah, basically they live in a shrine to Bryce Marcus’ achievements. And they’re great achievements, especially for his age, and Jared is proud of him, but still, it looks a little like a future exhibit at the Hockey Hall of Fame.

“I told you you could put yours up too,” Bryce says, completely missing the point. 

“You know I didn’t like, pick the art, right?” Chaz asks. “I feel like I’m getting props for shit I had nothing to do with.”

“Got the taste to rent it,” Jared says. 

“Do you want art or something?” Bryce says. “We can get art. You didn’t say you wanted art.”

“Okay, time out,” Chaz says. “No couple bickering in my apartment. That’s an Official Rule.”

“We’re not bickering,” Jared says. “And you sublet, so it’s hardly your apartment.”

Chaz snorts. “Always fucking semantics with you, eh?”

“Always,” Jared says.

“You sound like _you’re_ couple bickering,” Bryce mutters under his breath. Honestly, Jared has like, zero patience for jealousy, except sometimes Bryce makes it adorable, and that’s annoying. Grumping because Jared isn’t just mean to him is the most ridiculous thing ever.

If Chaz was around Jared would probably continue teasing Bryce for being a jealous dork, with the addition of zero personal space and possibly a few pokes, verbal and physical, but that’s probably out, for Chaz’s comfort level and Bryce’s. And Jared’s, honestly. He’s always hated those couples who couldn’t keep their hands off each other, still does even though he’s pretty sure he’s part of one now. At least they keep it behind the apartment door. Public flaunting’s gross.

Jared is not thinking about the other reason it stays in their apartment. Bryce told Chaz. Well, Bryce had Jared tell Chaz, but the point is that Bryce took a step out of his comfort zone, a big one, and Jared can’t exactly ask him to take another when he’s still adjusting to the first one.

“Beer?” Chaz asks. “Mario Kart?”

“Yeah,” Bryce says. “Beer.”

“Mario Kart,” Jared says, but he takes the beer Chaz offers him, even though it’s like, not even evening yet. He gets dibs on first match-up against Chaz, and then puts his beer down and promptly forgets about it, and maybe not willingly fucking with his hand-eye coordination and trying to multitask playing and drinking is why he kicks Chaz’s ass, then Bryce’s, then Chaz’s again.

Bryce demands a rematch, like it’ll make any difference, and Jared shrugs and takes him on again. They’re on the second lap when Chaz’s thumb brushes the back of Jared’s neck, and Jared jumps, pauses the game right before he goes right off the fucking track. Dirty pool. Jared didn’t know Chaz was Team Bryce, but apparently he is.

“Your tag was sticking out, it was driving me nuts,” Chaz says, then, laughing, “Dude, don’t look at me like that.”

“I’m not looking at you like anything,” Jared protests — he’s not exactly a fan of getting touched without expecting it, but when you play on a line with a guy long enough, personal space breaches don’t really register anymore, and he weirdly _likes_ Chaz cheating for Bryce’s sake, especially because Bryce won’t win anyway — but then he realises Chaz isn’t talking to him, but Bryce, who has like, a thundercloud face on, looks like he’s gearing up to throw a punch Chaz’s way.

“Oh my god, you dork,” Jared says. “Don’t worry, I can’t catch hetero by touch.”

Chaz kicks his ankle, and Jared kicks back.

“You paused, you forfeit,” Chaz says. That’s an official Mario Kart rule with the Hitmen, but a) Chaz isn’t on the Hitmen, and b) it’s _Chaz’s_ fault Jared did. “My turn to play Bryce.”

“You _made_ me pause,” Jared says.

“Don’t make the rules,” Chaz says. “Such a cheater, Matheson.”

Jared kicks his ankle harder, and gets a punch to the kidney in response. That obviously deserves a proportional response of Jared taking him down off the damn couch, which he manages, because clearly Chaz didn’t expect to be tackled.

“I will fucking end you, Rossi,” Jared says, then, after he gets a knee to the side, which fucking _hurts_ , “Little help, Bryce?”

“That is unfair!” Chaz says. “You don’t get to tag him in.”

“I’m not going to,” Jared says, trying to trap Chaz’s flailing hands before they do more damage. “We’re teaming up. Pretty sure there are no rules in roughhousing except maybe no permanent injury.”

That one’s common sense, along with ‘avoid the face and any current injuries’, though last month ‘no biting’ was added to the Hitmen’s roughhousing rules, because _someone_ (Erskine) apparently needed that to be made official.

Well they’re teaming up if Bryce actually bothers to do it. Jared turns his head to glare at him, because he’s not showing much initiative, looking down at them with this face like he’s half bemused, half entertained. “You gonna help any time soon?”

“I’ll take his legs?” Bryce asks, and Chaz squawks, starts to thrash, which is aborted when Bryce takes the most efficient route and just sits on them. Hard to shake over two hundred pounds off your legs, especially when you’re dealing with another hundred and seventy five simultaneously.

Jared sits triumphantly on Chaz’s chest, ignoring a feeble punch to his thigh from the one hand Jared doesn’t have trapped.

“Go team,” Jared says, holding his hand out, and Bryce gives him a high five while Chaz scowls up at them.

“This is totally unfair,” Chaz whines, then, more plaintively, “Jared I can’t breathe.”

He can breathe well enough to talk, but Jared is magnanimous in victory, so he rolls off Chaz, still grinning at Bryce. “Thanks for the assist, Marcus.”

“Any time, Matheson,” Bryce says, grinning right back.

“Okay, please don’t eye-fuck in my apartment,” Chaz says, and Bryce’s smile drops, so Jared punches Chaz again, even though Chaz looks guilty about it like, the second he says it.

Bryce keeps his distance from him a little bit after that, like, making sure Chaz is between them, and Jared is seriously ready to throttle Chaz for running his mouth by the time they leave, because the last thing Bryce needs is to be _more_ self-conscious about appearing gay, especially in front of like, the only person around his age that knows. 

Well, other than Jared, but he doesn’t count for obvious reasons, and Raf, but Bryce is always on the defensive around Raf, and Jared doesn’t exactly see them hanging out much in the future. Bryce and Raf, Jared means. Jared’s definitely going to hit Raf up when the Caps come to Calgary in a month, he misses the dude — though he emphatically does not miss playing him, the Hurricanes are a way easier opponent without him — and they text and stuff, but it isn’t the same.

Jared worries that self-consciousness will remain when they head home around nine — Chaz and Bryce have practice pretty early, and Jared has a game tomorrow — that he’ll keep quiet, and maybe that distance will last, but after Jared sits down on the couch and turns the TV on, Bryce basically plasters himself to Jared’s body and then steals the remote.

“Hey,” Jared says, but without much ire, considering his relief. “I don’t want to watch your stupid shows, I just wanted to see what the Oilers score was.”

Bryce dutifully changes to Sportsnet — they’re down by four against the Golden Seals, and Jared regrets checking — and then turns the TV off.

“Um,” Jared says. Not that he wants to watch the carnage ensue or anything, but Bryce is looking very serious, and it’s making him nervous, especially if this is a conversation they have to turn the TV off for.

“Do you actually want art?” Bryce says earnestly. “Because we can look at some online, maybe—”

“I was chirping you, babe,” Jared says. Though, really, he wouldn’t mind. It’s pretty utilitarian, beyond the jerseys, and since all the rooms are painted white, it’s a lot of blank space. “I don’t want to mess with your design decisions.”

“They…weren’t really decisions,” Bryce says. “I just didn’t care. But I want you to like it here.”

“I do like it here,” Jared says. It has Bryce in it. And even when it doesn’t have Bryce in it, it still has the best cable package money can buy, and the best mattress Jared’s ever slept on, and a shower with awesome water pressure, and a coffee machine that probably cost a million dollars and honestly is _worth_ it. He liked coffee okay before he moved in, though he’d usually opt for tea most of the time, and now he would kill a man for his morning cup of coffee. 

“I want you to feel like, _home_ here,” Bryce says. “So like. I’m gonna go get my laptop.”

“Bryce,” Jared protests, but Bryce is already heading into the bedroom, comes back with it, sitting down and laying it out half on his thigh, half on Jared’s.

“You’re too nice to me,” Jared complains, and it sounds like the dumbest shit ever when it leaves his mouth.

Bryce shrugs it off. “I want to be nice to you,” he says. “So it’s like, selfish.”

“That’s not how selfishness works,” Jared says. He’s really good at it, so he’d know. Bryce wouldn’t hoard the better Gatorade flavours. He’d give Jared his favourite if Jared asked for it — and then apparently claim that was the selfish decision.

Jared suddenly feels guilty about always hiding the blue Gatorade behind all the other flavours because he knows Bryce just grabs the closest one.

Bryce, oblivious to Jared apparently growing as a person — he’ll stop hiding them starting, like, tomorrow — ‘WALL ART’ into google.

Jared sighs. “We’re only getting something we both like,” he says.

“Okay,” Bryce says easily.

“Don’t like, pretend you like something, okay?” Jared says. 

“Okay,” Bryce agrees.

They apparently have very, very different taste in art, and Jared almost regrets telling Bryce not to fake liking something, because at this point they’re never going to find a single thing. Bryce keeps going to like, the obvious prints, the ones so popular they make them into posters that get plastered in every other dorm room, and Jared is not putting freaking Starry Night on their wall.

“It’s a classic,” Bryce says. “Classics are classics for a reason.”

“Because no one cares enough about them to find them objectionable,” Jared says.

Bryce makes an audible ‘pft’ noise, and adds it to the cart. 

“Hey,” Jared says.

“For the guest room,” Bryce says. “My mom likes Van Gogh. We have the sunflower one in our kitchen.”

Great, Jared just dissed Bryce _and_ Elaine’s taste in art.

They find common ground in one like, ocean print, which yeah, sounds boring, but the colours are really nice, and — shockingly — this beautiful black and white photograph of like, an old school hockey game. It’s cool as hell, so Jared can’t begrudge the fact they’re adding _more_ hockey shit to the walls. They both live hockey, and it’s not like it doesn’t follow them home at night. Hockey follows Jared everywhere, a shadow he can’t shake. It’s usually welcome, as comforting as it is to look down and see his literal shadow, but sometimes — well, sometimes less great than that. And Jared knows Bryce is exactly the same, maybe even more so, because Jared takes a lot of things seriously, puts the effort in, but sometimes it seems like Bryce just does that with hockey. And like, his mom. And, well. Jared

Jared shifts down a little, ignoring Bryce’s grumpy noise when the laptop wobbles, and puts his chin on Bryce’s shoulder. Bryce turns and kisses his temple, thoughtless, almost automatic, like ‘hey, Jared’s face is right there, I’m going to kiss it’. 

It is actively disgusting how in love with him Jared is, and the only saving grace there is that it’s so fucking obvious he’s not the only one who feels that way. Beating on Chaz, having killer sex, being disgustingly in love with each other: they’ve got this teamwork shit down. Except maybe on agreeing about art, apparently.

Jared nudges his nose against Bryce’s jaw. “Want to check out and go to bed?”

“I think we should get something for the hall,” Bryce says. “Like, maybe—”

“Bed,” Jared says, digging his chin into Bryce’s shoulder.

“You tired?” Bryce asks. “We can—”

“Naw, I just feel like jerking you off right now,” Jared says, and Bryce plucks the laptop away from Jared, enters his payment info in what must be record time, and then drags Jared to bed.

Fucking teamwork, man.


End file.
